Life of an American poker playing expat, turned teacher, in Australia | 707 VPPs in 2013

Monday, April 18, 2011

#GG

Hmm, what to say! April 15th - Black Friday - will forever be seared into our collective memories as the most important day in the history of online poker. The swiftness and effectiveness of US law-enforcement agencies in shutting down each of the top three poker companies' operations in the USA is staggering and simply mind-blowing. With all this commotion, there has been very little information to come out either from the sites involved or the Department of Justice/FBI. As such, it's crucial that we all keep the speculation to a minimum and just be patient for official information.

Now in the aftermath, everyone will certainly have concerns, priorities, and plans for handling this epic event, but I imagine the #1 item on everyone's mind is the security of our funds. At the beginning as everything was unfolding, my take on the money situation was pretty grim and I really didn't expect a high chance that we would ever be getting our money back. Since then however, positive developments have occured such as Pokerstars' personal calls to every Supernova+ VIP ensuring that our funds are safe. I had a 20 minute phone conversation with SteveD, the VIP manager of Pokerstars, that was comforting. Even though he wasn't allowed to disclose any particular details, it seemed like the situation is under Pokerstars' control. We even joked about the fact that PS didn't just close up shop and disappear with all our money haha. In addition, I've learned that during Pokerstars' licensing requirements in the Isle of Man, it was stipulated that all player funds be placed in trust accounts that cannot be seized by any authority other than the listed trustee. Whatever that means. I'm sure there is a myriad of other legal technicalities that are involved, as well as countless factors that will come into play, so we'll all just have to wait and see.

In addition to the integrity of our balances, of course we are all wondering about the future of online poker in the US. It certainly looks bleak, but we really just don't know enough about the situation to make any sort of educated predictions. Lest we forget, it's only been 3 days(!) since the **** hit the fan. And it's been weekend days where obv nobody works in the US government ;) Naturally, we can't help but speculate and think of continuing the life and traveling to foreign countries to cash out and continue playing. If this were to happen, I would probably go back to Sydney, Australia where I was already planning to visit this year anyways. It would work out quite well, so hopefully that's an option. Or perhaps O! Canada; I've always wanted to visit Vancouver.

Anyways best of luck to all of us these next few days/weeks as the situation unfolds itself. No one can really do anything at this point so it's just best to just accept what's coming and make the best of it.